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Creating a T-Shirt Rag Rug

My latest DIY project has been to create a bathmat out of old t-shirts. A very simple idea with great results. Mine is still a work in progress as I am slowly working on it, but I think I’ve done enough now to show you.

I only have very basic knitting skills and fortunately for this project that is all you need. I have never followed a pattern or learnt the art of knit one pearl one. If fact, I don’t even know what that means!

To start your rug, you will need plenty of old t-shirts of various colours. It’s surprising how many t-shirts you will go through to create a rug the size of a bathmat.

Next you need a good rotary cutter with a sharp blade so you can cut your t-shirts into 3/4 inch strips. Then roughly cut these strips in halves or thirds just to make them shorter. The shorter the length of your t-shirt strips – the more tuffs you will have running though your rug.

Once you have plenty of strips of various colours, mix them up and then knot them together to create a ball of ‘wool.’

Next you need to decide how big you would like your rug to be. I decided on 65 stitches for mine.

All there is left to do now is knit away.

The back of the rug

The last step is to pull all of the tuffs through so they lay only on one side of the rug. As you can see in this photo, I haven’t pulled through my latest tuffs yet. And that’s all there is to it. Just remember to pester your friends and family for any unwanted shirts and with a little patience you will soon have a wonderful new rug.